Rod Watts appointed to the Graduate Center

Rod Watts combines cutting-edge research and a strong theoretical framework with a commitment to social justice. His work encompasses liberation psychology, manhood development, and sociopolitical development theory; for the past few years he has been investigating the connection between a person’s awareness of injustice and his or her willingness to act on this awareness. Trained in clinical and community psychology, he has worked with many nonprofit and community-based organizations, in particular in the area of African American youth development, and has been continuously involved in men’s group work for twenty years. He is coeditor of Human Diversity: Perspectives on People in Context (Jossey-Bass, 1994), which offers practical guidelines on conducting diversity-conscious and diversity-sensitive projects and research, and he contributed to the book Beyond Resistance! Youth Activism and Community Change (Routledge, 2006). Watts’s teaching interests include program evaluation, African American psychology, consultation, and qualitative research methods. He comes to the GC from Georgia State University, where he coordinated the joint clinical-community psychology program. He was recently visiting professor of psychology at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, and he also has been on the faculties of DePaul University and Yale University’s School of Medicine. He holds a Ph.D. in clinical-community psychology from the University of Maryland.